It has been a couple of days now, and I have been able to internalize what happened and actually build the story of my accident on the Interstate I-35 near Hillsboro, Texas.
I started from Denton early in the afternoon towards College Station. After a long dry spell, it has been raining since noon. I knew that the roads would be wet and my Mustang would have less traction than usual. So I started cautiously. By about 3PM I was past the city of Dallas on I-35E South and was about to merge into I-35 South. Thanks to construction around there, there were 2-feet concrete separators along the sides of the highway.
As I was approaching the merge point I saw a state trooper with his lights on. I figured someone has just gotten a ticket for speeding, but didn’t think much of it. I was driving at 60 miles/hr, at the speed limit. This was t-6 seconds before the accident. As soon as I merge into I-35 I see a car about a 100 ft in front of me going at about 20 miles/hr with no flashers. It was about a third of a second before I realized that the car was going too slow for a freeway (the suggested minimum is about 40 miles/hr. Anything less than that it is advised to have your flashers on to warn the traffic behind you). So I begin to slow down immediately. I stamp on my breaks and downshift from 5th gear to 3rd gear and am slowing down quite quickly.
It is now t-4 seconds to impact and I realize that I am going to have to slam on the breaks real hard to avoid rear ending the car in front of me and I not sure if I should do it. Its been raining, the roads are slippery, and I could lose control of the car breaking that hard. So I look in my rear view mirror to see if the left lane is open. All I see is the state trooper driving by at about 50-60 miles/hr, and I gauge that he should pass me in about a second or so. Meanwhile I am still closing in on the car in front of me. I best I have managed so far is 30 miles/hr, and I am still gaining on the car in front.
It is now t-3 seconds to impact and the state trooper has just passed me. So I shift to the left lane and breathe a sigh of relief. But I quickly realize that there is traffic about 200 ft behind me closing on me fast. I have to accelerate and quickly. But I am doing 25 miles/hr and am on 3rd gear, so there is no way I can accelerate fast enough in 3rd. So I downshift to second gear for higher torque and acceleration. Its a 3.8L 225 HP V-6 engine, it can pack a punch in lower gears.
It is now t-2 seconds to impact and I have just downshifted to second gear. As expected the car slows down with a jerk, but what I do not realize that when the car slows down like that (due to resistance from the lower gear in the transmission), the wheels move slower but the body of the car is still plowing forward. This means my heavy engine is pressing harder in the front and my front wheels are hugging the road whereas my rear wheels have lightened up significantly. If I wait for a second, the load will stabilize. But I completely miss that and I am in a hurry to accelerate to avoid the traffic behind me. That is when I make a critical error.
It is still t-2 seconds and as soon as I downshift to second gear I hit the throttle (gas pedal, or accelerator pedal). The front wheels are still hugging the ground the rear wheels are still light. Thanks to the rain after a long hot dry spell, all the oil in the road have floated to the top and the traction is low. So as soon as my engine responds with a roar the rear wheel starts spinning but can’t grip the road. I realize that immediately because my dashboard shows that my engine rpm has rocketed up to 4000 while my speed is still at 25 mile/hr. I knew I was in trouble. In the next fraction of a second the rear wheel will grip the road and the wet road is going to make things very very difficult for me.
It is t-1.5 seconds and the rear wheels hit the ground and my Mustang’s rear started skidding to the right. I tried compensating for it by turning right (in the direction of the skidding). My front wheels did not respond immediately, and when they did, I had turned for too long and the rear started skidding to the left, and I tried compensating for it, again, by turning left (in the direction of the skidding). The same thing happened again, I had over-steered, and my car started fish-tailing back and forth.
It is t-1 seconds to impact. At this point I knew it was useless. The wet road provided absolutely no resistance and the fish-tailing was getting wilder and wilder until my car turned 90 degrees to the roads and crashed into the concrete separator at over 35 miles/hr. There was thud, the airbags deployed, and all that was left of my car was this!
Mustang - Front View - Totaled much?
Mustang - Side View - Airbags deployed
Comments are disabled for this post